child of God, wife, mother, recovering anorexic who longs to see the beauty in herself that she sees in the world around her

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

I AM going to get to 200 someday!

  • 22.  I learned how to make my own laundry soap :)
  • 23.  My oldest son asks everyday what we can do to hang out just the 2 of us.  I must be doing something right if he enjoys my company.
  • 24.   I am now working on the next baby blanket that I  am going to give away.  Someday I will have the blanket done before the baby is born, but for now I'm just happy that I am actually working on it.
  • 25.  Last night I made my hubby lunch for work today.  That saves some money
  • 26.  I went to Target for groceries the other day and between discounts and coupons saved $24.  
  • 27.  I am getting the hang of this coupon thing and it is actually working (though I am not nearly as crazy or intense as those Extreme Couponing ladies!)
  •  28.  I ate yesterday even though my brain begged me not to.
  • 29.  I woke up early today so I can take my kids to the zoo.
* for those of you new to my blog, the 200 is things I have accomplished in my life.  Things that I am good at, things I have done right etc... you can check out my list so far over at labels, 200 :)

Monday, May 30, 2011

it is not good

Have you ever read the creation story in Genesis?  God is creating land and sea, night and day, plants, animals and people and finally  "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good." (Gen 1:31)  Did you know that there was one thing that he said "It is not good" about? 

Yep, after God made Adam He looked around and said  “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” In all that God had created, in all that He saw to be good, He saw also that it was not good for man to be alone.  I think of this often.  God created us for community, for intimacy, for love. 

I have discovered through the years that there are a lot of lonely places in life.   Anorexia is one of them.  Depression is one of them.  Abuse is one of them.  Trauma is one of them.  Perfection is one of them.  It is so easy to isolate, to assume no one in the world understands.  But that isn't how God made us.  He made us to need each other.  He made us to support each other. 

I have to say thank you to my blogger buddies (especially to these two wonderful ladies).  I thought I was alone.  The only support I had found was supporting my disease, not my recovery.  I was very lonely.  I was sure that I was alone in the emotions of anorexia, even though I had support from others outside of the situation.  I want to thank so many of you for allowing me into your lives, for showing me your hearts, for being honest about your recovery and progress.  In doing so, you have allowed me to see that I am not and was never alone in my battle.  We are all at different stages of recovery but we all have days when we want to throw in the towel, days when we want to beat the disease more than give in to it and days when we just keep going because it is the right thing to do.

The only thing in all of creation that was not good was for man to be alone.  Thanks for showing me that I am not alone!

Sunday, May 29, 2011

in the image of God

Dear Beautiful,
     I made you and I have never made a mistake.  I made those blue eyes that you are thankful for.  I made those thighs that you criticize.  I designed the tender compassion you feel so strongly for others.  I made you with thought and care, you were not and are not a mistake.  I thought out every detail of your being long before I created you.  You are exactly the way I wanted you to be.  I fashioned those long "piano fingers" as your grandmother called them.  I saw your smile in my mind before it ever appeared on your face.  I knew your heart before you did.  It is not a coincidence or the way you were raised that you love to read and write, I created that in you.  I knew you would love the spring time lilacs just as much as I do and that the beauty of the blooming trees would sing to your heart.  You are beautiful because I am beautiful and you were made in my image.  I did some great work when I made you.  I am not ashamed of you.  Quite opposite, I am so proud when I see you.  I see beauty you think you only dream of.  I see courage and strength that you don't even know exist.  I look at you and I see Me.  I see what I have created and it is good. 
Love,
God

Saturday, May 28, 2011

200

  •  17.   I sat down with my youngest this morning and taught him how to do the puzzle game known to us as the game of Perfection.  He's not ready for the timer but I'm teaching him shapes :)
  • 18.   I made homemade from scratch crock pot brownies today.  AND I ate TWO of them!
  • 19.    I pulled weeds in my back yard.  Two hours and sunburned shoulders later, at least one section of my yard is done.
  • 20.    This week I finished sewing a baby blanket that I had intended to give a year ago but life got in the way and I just didn't get around to finishing it.
  • 21.    There are no dirty dishes in my sink tonight when I go to bed.

    loving my enemies

    There is a lot of commands in the Bible about love that keep me going.  Two summers ago, I was completely convicted by the command to love my enemies and pray for those who hurt me.  I had had a rough time with some people and was dreading the new school year and having to face them.  So I wrote out the verses in Luke 6 about loving people who I really didn't feel like loving and put it on my kitchen cabinets where I was daily face to face with it.  Every time the situation came to my mind or the names of the disliked people, I would pray for them.  I would pray that God would help me to love them even though I didn't want to, I would pray that He would help me to be merciful as He is merciful, I prayed that He would draw them unto Himself.  It started out difficult and by the end of summer it was second nature to pray for these people instead of gossip about them.  Over the years I have found praying for people who have hurt me to be helpful to me.  I find myself not harboring the resentment that was once festering.  Not that it is always easy peesy but praying for my "enemies" has become part of me, part of what I do. 

    And now I struggle to pray for and love someone who has hurt me in the name of love.  The others did not have emotional attachment to me.  They were people who I've had to deal with in comings and going but not people who are part of my life.  I can distance myself and be objective and wonder what might be going on in their lives to cause them to behave like they do with minimal struggle.  Yet, I cannot seem to have any desire to want to love someone who I should indeed feel love for.

    I don't want to pray for my mom.  I am angry with her.  I don't feel love for her right now.  I struggle to even want to love her.  Wow, this is quite an unload.  I try so hard to keep my feelings for her under a veil on my blog because I don't want her to look bad, or maybe because I don't want to look like a bad daughter.  Today though I realize, this is my blog, my emotional outlet, my place to be honest about my feelings and besides, no one in my family reads anything I write anyway. 

    Yesterday we had to go over to her house.  I was excited for the reason, to see my extended family that I was moaning about the other day, but I was less than excited to go.  When she called me and bumped dinner up by an hour and the new start time was only 15 minutes away, I lost it.  We got in a nice little yelling match on the phone.  I got off the phone and let the expletives fly.  My hubby then let his expletives fly (in regards to them not at me!).  We both sat in our basement, me crying, both of us venting and swearing and dreading going to see my parents.  Hubby has been bottling feelings of anger and disgust towards my parents since September when I went to the hospital.  Finally they spilled out into our conversation last night.

    He is angry that they never got me help.  When I was battling depression that left me regularly attempting suicide, they refused to acknowledge my pain.  They told my principle that I did not need professional help, I just needed more time with God.  When I was wasting away before their eyes, they never acknowledged that I had a problem.  See, good Christians didn't have problems so rather than admit that I had a problem, they pretended it didn't exist.  Hubby is angry that they didn't help me get help when I was younger and that it had a chance to get as bad as it has as an adult.  Now, from a very long time of battling anorexia on my own, I know that even if they had gotten me help when I was younger that relapse is always possible.  And yet, hubby has some points also.  Some of the sh*t that I am working through now should have been handled 2 decades ago and wasn't. 

    He is angry that when I was in the hospital that we had to keep it from my parents.  They still don't know that I completely disappeared for a week.  He called in at work and was a single dad for a week with support from his parents and help from them so he could come and visit me on visiting days.  And where were my parents?  Oblivious.  Yes we chose to keep them in the dark.  I have seen the hell my mom has put some of her friends through for being on antidepressants and refuse to go through the same hell for my medications or my hospitalization.  She is convinced that godly people should not need psychiatric drugs.  Hubby feels like in their choosing to ignore all the big issues in my life growing up, that my adult life has been a series of working through things that I should have been already starting working through.

    And I am angry.  I feel like no matter how good I am that I'll never quite reach her standards for me.  I'll always be just one task short of being good enough.  I don't understand why she can be a mom to people from their church who don't have family here but she can't be a mom to me.  I don't understand why I'm not loveable, why I am always second best.  I'm really hurt.  Really. Really. Hurt.  How do I love her when everything inside of me wants to hate her?  How do I pray for the one who hurt me who was supposed to love me?  I know that God doesn't ask us to love and then not provide the means to love.  I know He can fill me with His love for her if I ask.  The problem is that I don't want to ask.  I don't want to love her right now. 

    I have all of the right answers.  I know that not only has God commanded me to love, He has also said that anyone who harbors hatred is not living in the light (1 John 2).  I guess I need to pray that God will give me the desire to be willing to love her and pray for her.  That is the starting place.  I'm not quite to the point of praying that God will help me to love her as He loves her, I'm at the first baby step of praying that God will make me willing to ask His help in loving someone I don't want to love.

    For those of you who have an awesome relationship with your mom, you are so blessed and I envy you!  Treasure that gift.  For those of you who are like me and have rocky relationship with your mom, join me in praying that God would make us willing to be willing. 

    Friday, May 27, 2011

    The Pursuit of Perfect

    I have recently developed the habit of getting audio books when I go to the library.  I love to read but often just don't have the time.  I started getting audio books when I had a cd player in my car and now I play them in my kitchen while I am cooking dinner, doing dishes, and whatever else keeps me in the kitchen kid free for more than 5 minutes.  The other advantage of this is that I have a "dead tree book" (my dad-in-law's phrase since he got his Kindle) that I actually read when I have time to sit down and I have the one I listen to, so I get to have 2 books going at once and both get equal attention.

    Currently I am listening to The Pursuit of Perfect by Tal Ben-Shahar. 






    My first impression of the audio version is that the guy reading sounds vaguely like a robot and is at times a bit boring to listen to.  But the content of the book, however, fabulous.  I have only listened to the first of 7 discs and so far I have to say this book is hitting home in way too many ways.  I find myself on one hand agreeing with much of what is said and on the other hand wanting to throw my cd player to the ground because it is so right on that it is a bit eerie.  He even addresses eating disorders and the role that perfectionism can play in it.  


    One part that resonated is how a perfectionist sees things only in black and white, success and failure.  There is no middle ground.  In the case of eating disorders, the perfection drives one to starve to achieve perfection and there is no moderation.  There is no such thing as one piece of cake because that means failure.  If you have had one piece you may as well finish what's left because you have already failed by swerving from your strict acceptable foods list.  It is all or nothing.  


    I have also seen how others expectations of perfection, specifically my mom's, have shaped my own view of what is ok and what is not.  I am suddenly aware that my inner perfectionist has been come by naturally.  I was raised with often times unrealistic expectations and have come to put those on myself.  I don't try new things or like to make decisions because what if I fail?  


    The author does a really great job of portraying stories to support the evidence that failure is a necessary part of a healthy life.  It is a terrifying perspective to be sure, but also a healthy one.  It is definitely worth the time to read, especially if you have bold or latent perfectionist tendencies in you.  I would recommend the actual book over the audio on this one.  The content is fabulous but the reader is a little boring.  If audio is all you can get your hands on though, it is still worth it.